HPM 224 Foundations of Health Accounting, Finance, and Economics

This multidisciplinary course provides a foundation for our students in Health Accounting, Finance, and Economics. This course has three modules that introduces students to basic Accounting, Finance, and economic thinking as a tool for understanding and interpreting health problems. In the health accounting module, we survey the five primary accounting areas: financial, managerial, taxation, auditing and accounting information systems. Each area is introduced in terms of its background, conceptual basis, an application in the business environment. Students then move to a survey of health financing, learning approaches to the financing and investment decisions in a health organization. Subjects include the essentials of financial ratios, analysis, managing assets and liabilities, cost of long-term capital and the required rate of return on long terms assets, estimating cash flow on investment proposal, net present value, capital budgeting, risk and return and capital structure. Finally, the module on health economics presents and develops economic theory of supply and demand to explain the behavior and interaction of organizations, households and the government.